Flaming Hobos

One of the songs we are working up is actually a combo of two separate Irish tunes that have been intertwined into a single song. The two songs are, Crooked Jack and The Blacksmith and the arrangement comes to us via Nickel Creek.  As one might suspect they do not opt for the easy way to arrange the two songs.  So it is not a simple; sing one song and then transition to the other one. No, they are intertwined and at various points overlap in small pieces, or near the end the final verse of each of the songs are sung simultaneously.

The other fun part of the arrangement are the chords. They may be this convoluted in the origional but somehow I get the felling that the may ahve taken a bit of liberty with the melodies and chord progressions. Here is the chords progression through one of the verses of one of the blacksmith segments:

G Bm Em Asus2 C Bm D+ Em D G Asus2 Em F#m  B7 G Bm D C# C D  Em  D  Bm   Asus2  G  F#m

Sounds really cool once you get it but is not your run of the mill chord progression. But what I am finding to be the tricky part is actually the rhythm.  It cover a wide spectrum of rhythmic styles from slow strums all the way to fast eighth note strums and everything in between.

It will be the type of songs that goes well and the crowd will love and we will have a blast playing or it will crash and burn spectacularly.  We are planning on having fun with it.

I was hoping to post a ling to one of Nickel Creeks performances of the song but I was not able to find it. So here is a video of an Irish group doing the Blacksmith portion of the song.